Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ /"//Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is* really you talking to me*.// //Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.”

And the Lord said, “I will wait until you return.”//

//Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast.

Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.// //The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.”

And Gideon did so.//

//With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the Lord touched the meat and the unleavened bread.

Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread.

And the angel of the Lord disappeared.//

//When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Ah, Sovereign Lord!

I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”// //But the Lord said to him, “Peace!

Do not be afraid.

You are not going to die.”// /*/So Gideon built an altar/*/ to the Lord there and called it The Lord is Peace.

To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.//"

(Judges 6:17-24, NIV) *[1]*/

 

It is so easy for us to read the scriptural accounts and to pass over them quickly without stopping to fill in the emotional details.

What would it have been like to – how would you have felt if you had been Noah and God was asking you to spend the lion’s share of your life building a boat in the middle of the desert.

Midst the bewilderment and the mocking of your neighbors to stay on task for that many years.

Do you suppose that you would have found it difficult to get up in the morning and face the new day with a stellar attitude?

Or stuttering tongue-tied Moses called to return to Egypt, where there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

Wanted for murdering an Egyptian in defense of his own people.

And that made him no hero with the Israelites.

Moses struggled to identify the voice that called him.

(Exodus 3)

 

/"//But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”// //And God said, “I will be with you.

And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”//

//Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’

Then what shall I tell them?”// //God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.

This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”//" (Exodus 3:11-14, NIV) *[2]*/

/ /

/" //Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”//" (Exodus 4:1, NIV) *[3]*/

/ /

/"//Moses said to the Lord, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant.

I am slow of speech and tongue.”//

//The Lord said to him, “Who gave man his mouth?

Who makes him deaf or mute?

Who gives him sight or makes him blind?

Is it not I, the Lord?// //Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”// //But Moses said, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”//"

(Exodus 4:10-13, NIV) *[4]*/

/ /

*/1.

/**/Learning to Recognize the Voice of God/*

 

A person had better know for sure before they decide to follow God, just who is talking to them.

There are seductive and deceptive voices that whisper to all of us.

God was raising a leader from among a people who had begun to include many gods in their worship.

It wasn’t that they had forgotten Jehovah, simply that they had made room or space for others.

One of the similar tendencies in the modern day church is to make room for “other gods”

 

/"//They provoked him to jealousy with *strange gods*, with abominations provoked they him to anger.//

//They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.//

//Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.//"

(Deuteronomy 32:16-18, KJV) *[5]*/

 

I believe a very large majority of churchgoers are merely unthinking, slumbering worshipers of an unknown God.

 

   -- Charles H. Spurgeon in Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol.

11.  Christianity Today, Vol.

40, no.

1.

There are times that these things can seem harmless perhaps and yet they may seem different in God’s eyes.

¨      I found some sort of talisman in my Dad’s dresser when we were cleaning out the house recently there were directions as to where it should be placed and actually directions as to how to use it in meditation.

¨      I saw a Tim Horton’s employee following a shift, sitting in a restaurant playing with Tarot cards.

¨      There are most likely some here today who read horoscopes with some regularity.

¨      We can come to worship our traditions as the Pharisees did to the point that they create spiritual blindness.

¨      What about sacred relics that the church venerates, pieces of bone, the Shroud of Turin, church furniture.

¨      Sometimes we worship the way that we worship.

“Just like do's-and-don'tism, liturgism comes in two varieties: high and low.

... If you're from Bumpkin Ridge you may need a different strategy than genuflections and incense.

It's the old favorite hymns that make you feel the religion in your heart.

...

And it's not the priest crossing himself that makes you feel religious, but the thump of his fist on the pulpit, and the song leader flingin' his arms every which way.

If there isn't enough arms-flingin' and Bible-thumping, the Holy Spirit just doesn't grip on you.

... If the high liturgy was a French dinner, this is a hot dog and a Coke.

n      Robert Roberts in the Reformed Journal (Feb.

1987), Christianity Today, Vol.

33, no.

14.

 

¨      Sometimes it is the overriding voice of our own emotion that distorts the will of God for our lives.

Part of the difficulty that God has in getting our attention is that we have so many other voices that we have made room for.

There are so many other authoritative influences that we include in the mix.

It seems in many ways that the more we have come to know of our world and ourselves the less we know of God.

Now that’s not to mention the various media personalities and authorities that we look to for guidance in our lives.

The longer the list of influencers that we have the more difficult it can become to distinguish the voice of God.

Gideon requested, “give me a sign that it is really you talking to me.”

We learn in the rest of Gideon’s story that Gideon’s ability to hear God was as obscured as the rest of his people.

And in order for God to raise a champion, he or she must be a person who becomes familiar with that voice.

The more that you exercise the capacity through the discipline of listening, or waiting, or silence, the easier it becomes.

Can you recognize the voice of God today?

*/2.

/**/Understanding that God Is Waiting For You/*

 

So what does Gideon do, he asks “the angel of the Lord” to wait for him while he prepares an offering.

God is forever waiting for us.

It’s never us waiting for God – it’s most always God waiting for us.

/"//The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.

He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.//" (2 Peter 3:9, NIV) *[6]*/

 

Think about that for a minute.

How many of us pray prayers and then sit back and wait for God to do something as though we can dish off to God so completely.

Powerful prayers are prayers that are accompanied  by consistent, diligent, cooperative action.

Like the little boy who repeatedly approaches his father with a request for a new bike.

There is very little gratitude in his requests – more a sense of entitlement as though the father exists to satisfy the wishes of the son.

It’s impossible for God to bless a person like this and it’s impossible for a father to bless a son like this.

One hundred bicycles won’t make him happy.

Ingratitude is a blessing blocker.

God won’t give us what we can never appreciate.

He waits for us and works with us to bring us to the place where we cacn fully appreciate what we have before he gives us more stuff.

Now if the little boy comes to his father and says, “Dad, I really want a new bicycle.

I’m wondering if you might help me to get one.

I’ll do anything that I can do to help in the process.

I'll mow the lawn.

I’ll take out the garbage.

Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do.

Any father can bless a son like that.